There is always low hanging fruit

I have been joking with, lampooning to, and being lightly nonsensical for the edification of library patrons for nearly 25 years now at the front desk. So when someone came to me over by the cash register, handed me a one dollar bill saying "Break this?", and I took the bill, hurled it as hard as I could at the counter, and said "Hmm, wouldn't break. Would change work?" I was surprised.

I was not surprised at his moderately amused chuckle.

I was not surprised at my flimsy pun silliness.

I was surprised, nay, almost shocked, that I had never, in all the many years and opportunities, employed such a ridiculously obvious gag before.

Give it a few years and I may even try it again.

Harmony

You could make a reasonable case that I am being paranoid. Maybe I am, maybe I am not, but it all is, at least, based on evidence. And, since one of the main themes of this blog is that I'm not crazy, everyone else is, we will herewith proceed from the "not paranoid, merely cleverly perceptive" thesis.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working with some co-workers who, sadly, have been struggling with their health. By coincidence I have been often assigned to work with some of these people at the end of the day at the front desk of my library. When they leave early with their infirmities aggravated by the workday demands, one of my managers has to go and assign someone to take the place of my now ill work partner. This is done on an hourly basis, and for any given hour there may be as few as two possible replacements or as many as five. But each time my manager is definitely making a choice.

Every time, in seven or eight hours of this, my manager has unfailingly chosen the person I would least like to work with. Yes, whether it is the worst of two, or it is the worst of five, seven times out of seven it is, tellingly, the worst possible choice.

I'm just saying they're out to get me.



But oh, manager, the joke is on you! I can get along happily and harmoniously with everyone. 

Even you.

Genre leakage

Dear Staff,


As you know our library has always striven to maintain genre integrity to the best of our ability. This has not always been 100 percent effective. Not only has classic literature erupted into whole genres on their own (See Pride and Prejudice/Romance), leaving books unwholesomely on either side of the genre line, but successful genre literature regularly backwashes out of genre into literature (See 1984, Gone With the Wind, Nicholas Sparks, Handmaid's Tale, etc.). Nevertheless the barriers of genre have largely held steady.

Until now.

We have sprung a major leak from Science Fiction/Fantasy into the Romance genre. So far this leak is mainly one way, with the seepage running out of Science Fiction/Fantasy into Romance. While we are fortunate that there isn't a rash of "love among the aliens" running rampant, the problem the other way has nevertheless become severe. The Romance Genre, once reliably filled with women in 19th Century dresses, Viscounts, and weightlifting Highlanders with poorly fastened shirts, has now been completely overrun by werewolves, badass vampire hunters, half-pixies, and even, recently, a few space travelers!

How do you think a strapping Highlander who is a Duke is supposed to feel about all that?

Our initial suspicion is that with the Science Fiction/Fantasy backing onto the Romance in our order of shelving for so long, the barriers between the sections have worn thin in places and sprung leaks. Some of this is surely a matter of natural wear, but it is not helped by over-vigorous shelving. That is why we are asking everyone to take more gentle care in shelving. We understand that doing so may slow down the rate of shelving a little bit. But we feel hopeful that this sacrifice will be worth it if it can stem the tide of Starship Captains into our Romance Novels.

But we will not merely be relying upon more delicate shelving to correct this serious problem. This week we will, as an emergency measure, be moving the Mystery Genre in between the Romance and Science Fiction/Fantasy genres. While we feel that this will increase the number of prospective lovers solving crimes together, and will induce more murder mysteries on alien planets, it will give our major breach time to self repair, helping the genres to even out and settle into place.

Whatever happens we want to assure you that we will not let the genres blur into one giant glop of crossbred fiction wherein werewolf cowboy space captains fall madly in love with girls next door who are solving complicated murders in a way that reflects upon the current state of the culture and the history of the novel. If we have to separate all these different fiction structures into their own air sealed rooms we will, but as it stands now these are the first steps we'll be taking.

Good luck to everyone on this project and thank you for all you do!



The Library Director

Amateur golf season

Golf season has started up again here. And because I have a regular view on amateur golfers I find myself idly watching them on occasion. In fact, I have become pretty familiar with their behaviors. I use them to advance my study of human nature. Golf is good for that. And I have come across one interesting quality these amateur golfers widely share that differs strikingly from professional golfers.

I mean, besides how good they are.

It is this: most amateur golfers, when they miss their putt, which they do roughly 95 percent of the time, act as if the one to seven foot putt remaining to them (if they've managed that) is somehow so easy as to be beneath their dignity. They mainly just pick the ball up and take the last shot as a gimme. The odd thing is that if it's less than a foot they usually tap it in. I read this as: if they can reliably hit the ball in they do, but if they can't, but feel like they should be able to, they pretend that they are that good, too good to be tested, functionally as good as the professional golfers, who, curiously enough, almost always can make those short putts, but nevertheless go to the trouble of playing by the rules and doing so.

On the plus side I feel that assuming the short putt shaves five to ten strokes off of all these amateur golfer's scores.

On the minus side I feel it contributes to making all these amateur golfers remain surprisingly bad at putting.

Also, it's cheating.

I'm watching.


 

The County

The governmental institution that rules over my library system has grown ever stronger and more malignant over the past decade.

However, I'm not sure they would see it that way. They might say "Could we use maybe a less strong word than malignant?"

"Like what?" I might ask.

"How about," they would answer "Empowering assets to better serve the diverse community in a way that equally respects and enables our service patrons and our dedicated providers?"

To which I would reply "Not on my blog. It's all I have."

Library cards

I work at a library. I like the library patrons nearly all the time. But there are, nevertheless, a few... hundred... thousand... common behaviors at the front desk I don't like. And high on that list is the one in which a patron approaches, hands me something to check out, and nothing else.

I'm supposed to just know who they are? Magically? Without a library card!!!????

The truth is there are several hundred library patrons I know so well that it would be okay if they just popped up at my desk and I checked them out based on knowing their name. However, not a single one of these people would have the temerity to presume upon that relationship. Some of these people that I know by name are weird, and broken, and unhinged. Some of them are mentally disabled, obsessive, presumptuous, time consuming, and ill-mannered. But they at least understand that a library card is an essential part of the process.

So who then are these people who think they can just hand me some books and somehow I'll just check them out?

I don't know. They didn't give me a card.

Back on the bike

Biking season has returned to The Twin Cities. Not that it exactly left. There are bikes with big fat tires nowadays, and there are people who refuse to let the world say "no" to their bikes. But I rely upon the city bikeshare program. And it has a season. And that season corresponds roughly to:

Is there snow?

Do you think it's about to snow?

Is it weird that there's no snow?



If you answered "No" to all these questions then it's bike season!


Bike season, yay! I can leave our apartment later than usual for work! Or, more accurately, so far this Spring, I can leave the same time I always do and yet not be terribly late for once.

Instead of run-walking to work I say to myself "I'll just grab a bike!"

I grab a bike.

I haven't been on a bike for almost six months!


Minute one:  This is so fast and fun and easy and joyful!

Minute two:  Oh my god my thigh muscles hurt so much!

Minute three: Will this ever be over?


For myself the big adjustment comes when I am pedaling along as fast as I can. My back hurts. I can't take a deep breath. My hands burn with the cold. I feel nauseous. And I think:

I can go really slow if I want.

And I go really slow. I pedal gently. I catch my breath. I observe my surroundings. Did you know that the Magnolias are blooming?

Well sure, I know that now.

And I think:

Even still, I am going far faster than when I walk.

Well, a little faster.

And though I am going way, way, way slower than when I drive,

I am not murdering the planet. 

Which gives one a warm feeling. Which is useful when biking around here in the Spring.

Because it is 41 degrees out! 

And raining.

Condeluded

I have authored a new word. Use it as often as you like: 

Condeluded.

It is the best new word of the Century. When the august journals print their lists of the best new words of 2019 this will surely top all the lists.

Probably.

Perhaps you are wondering how I thought of it?

I have long held the concept of the word in my mind, but I did not have the word for it. At the library I work at, for decades I have tussled with the patrons over small fines, policies, and varied understandings of just what happened to a book. And I noticed a phenomenon: People were sometimes confused, or mistaken, or even deluded, but somehow almost invariably in their own favor. If they got a date wrong, or mistook a policy, or weren't clear on what someone told them, the mistake they made did not favor them 50 percent of the time, as the law of averages would dictate. It favored them 99.99 percent of the time, suggesting other forces at work.

I started referring to this as "people being deluded in their own favor". Then I woke up one morning, this one actually, and decided this idea needed a proper word.

I chose "Condeluded".

It means to be mistaken, or make a mistake, suspiciously in one's own favor. Like someone bad at math who consistently gives you the wrong change, but always too little and never too much.

Condeluded.


It's best synonym would be: 


Human.



Oh, you'd like to see it used in a sentence? I have written one just for you!


Not least because he is the author of said word, Feldenstein Calypso's belief that "condeluded" is the most important new word of this century is condeluded.

My cat blog

I saw a cat today.


Wait, let's start over:

Like you I don't know any celebrities. Celebrities are so manifold that I can probably name as many of them as I can name actual people that I know or have met. And yet they are so rare that I can statistically say that there aren't any and for most practical purposes be correct. Let me demonstrate:

I poked around on the Internet and was willing to take one sketchy estimation of one in 10,000 people being famous as at least vaguely based on something. But it also seemed overstated, including, as it seemed to do, everyone who is famous to someone. The number of people who consider someone famous is an utterly essential deciding factor in determining how many famous people there are. How many people have to know of someone for that person to be a celebrity? I prefer the definition of a celebrity as someone who in name or image, and with just a little context provided, would be known to at least a third of any random group, and at least a couple of people in that group would get kind of voluble and excited about just the idea of that person and their fame.  In all my years working at a library I have surely seen a couple hundred thousand people. Of those, according to my definition, real celebrities I have seen would number...

Zero.

So let's go with that statistic then: Zero out of 100,000 people are famous.

This makes it hard to talk about what it's like to run into famous people. But nevertheless for myself I have an idea of exactly what it must be like. 

It must be just like when I meet cats on the street.



1. I become very aware of them.

2. I am excited to catch a glimpse of them.

3. I get a little giddy.

4. While desperately wanting to be noticed by them and have an interaction, I also want to remain calm and cool so they'll think well of me.

5. If they like, approach, interact with, or talk to me, I feel inordinately proud, like I've accomplished something, or I'm special.


And when it's all over I can't wait to come on to my cat blog and tell you all about it.

The majesty of eagles

The Spring weather was going to cool a bit so disparate masses of air collided over my cities and created wind. Lots of wind, all night long. And then in the morning everything was cleared out; the dust, and the smoke, the motes, the just getting started pollen, and the clouds. Nothing was left. The sun froze brightly and the blue was revealed behind blue behind blue behind blue.

And I looked up high into the sky and there was a Bald Eagle. He was illuminated by the sun, made more vivid and absolute. He circled over the river, climbing into the sky while barely twitching a muscle. Large and small at the same time he was the whole world up there, perfectly detailed in the distance.

Then, to my surprise, he shit. 

The shit was large and white and vivid in the powerful light. Like a sinister jewel it floated down the sky. It trickled, it drifted, it floated. I think it is still falling. Any minute now, or hour, or day, and it will reach the ground. Its fall is inevitable, just... stately, regal, and majestic.

Watch your head.

Half life

Perhaps our lives should be measured in half years to get more out of them. How old can I manage to get by measure of all these thick and sprawling years? A century? Some decades? But in half years, today I would be then celebrating my 109th halfbirthday? And all of that with ever so many to go.

Oh, a present?

That is so kind of you but completely unnecessary.

I mean, if you absolutely insist.

For a gift I'd just like you to get everyone to read clerkmanifesto everyday. But only until I've taken over the World. At that point I'll become...

Benevolent.

But you don't have to do anything for my halfbirthday.

Just, you asked.

Or, I pretended you asked- same thing.

I am spending my 109th halfbirthday reading about dark matter. It turns out that most of what makes up the Universe is impossible to ever see, or hear, or touch. Poor dark matter. It is flying wildly through you right now, operating under its own mysterious rules.

They say it holds the Universe together.

And it is also what sends the Universe wildly expanding.

The Universe is tearing itself apart. But it is doing it so much more slowly than even our halfyears are tearing us apart that we probably don't need to worry about it.

But then, just because worry is always optional doesn't mean we can always choose whether or not to do it.

Why I support Joe Biden

Due to the recent success of my blogpost "Joe Biden Announces" I wanted to make sure I came back to the Internet with a new Joe Biden post. You see, it's not often my blog hits, um, 12 views.

Wait, that can't be right. "Joe Biden Announces" only got 12 views? That is terrible! That is tiny! That makes this whole endeavor hopeless. I need at least 14 views per post to achieve my overall goal of 

Uh-oh. I forgot my overall goal.

Let's just carry on then. It'll all come back to me eventually.



You were wondering why I support Joe Biden.

(Just play along)

I have composed a list of reasons.


1. He is better than the current President, though this of course is true of all 19 of the other candidates, plus the person who cuts your hair, and the crow I can see out my window. Nevertheless...

2. 

wait.


You know what? It's not all about reasons! What is it with everyone and their reasons! Enough already with the reasons! I can't take all the reasons anymore! My support for Joe Biden is too grand to be contained by mere, shudder, reasons.

I'm exhausted, frankly.

So let's just get right down to brass tacks on this one:


I just wish everyone would stop trying for a better world!

Hello literary agent

Dear High Profile Big Time Super Powerful Literary Agent!:




I have a manuscript of unpublished non fiction essays. They are a lot of fun! People have told me they liked them, although sometimes they just sort of insinuate it. But you take what you can get right?

No, you don't, obviously, being a big time super powerful literary agent. But I usually do.

However, the tide has turned for me, and that is why I am contacting you.

You don't think I would seriously waste your time with an untested manuscript that no one has demonstrated any interest in?

Well, I wouldn't. I would only waste publishers' time with that sort of thing.

But here's the deal: There are a bunch of publishers who are super interested in my work and want to have a huge bidding war over who gets to publish it!

This, unfortunately, is not my forte. I'd just mess it up. See above where I discuss taking what one gets.

That's where you come in. You, the literary agent, go find all these publishers and get them to overbid on my manuscript.

But look who's telling who how to do their job! I don't really know anything about it. You'll know how it goes, and then you'll make me a big, huge, famous writer who can afford to retire from library work early, not that there's anything terribly wrong with library work. Just, sometimes, you know.

And then after all that I say really nice things about you in the author's acknowledgements section!



It's going to be great for both of us!


Let me know when you have news!




Your author,



F. Calypso

Joe Biden announces

It has come to our attention that at precisely 2:17 p.m., on Thursday afternoon, Joe Biden will be announcing his candidacy for the President of the United States. As excited as we are to learn every, uh, detail of the fact that, er, he will be running for President, including, according to all reports, how he will be running for President, and um, how it means he will be one of the Presidential Candidates, er, starting right...about...then, I will, tragically, have to miss all this new... information.

I would, of course, love to see the fulfillment of this, er, thing. I mean, who wouldn't?

Unfortunately we have a scheduling conflict here. I have a series of very important announcements of my own that I'll be making right here at that very same time, and though Joe Biden has rescheduled his announcement 11 times now, it is, apparently, too late for either of us to change our plans. So, sadly, we will be announcing simultaneously.

This means you will have to choose!

I hate to make you choose between me and Joe Biden!

But I must, and I will do it as fairly as possible by presenting the detailed schedules of our respective announcements.


Joe Biden Announcement Schedule:



1:54   Announcement speculating on pre-announcer.

2:08   Pre-announcer announcing Joe Biden.

2:17   Joe Biden announcing.

2:27   People with absolutely nothing to say talk among themselves after the announcement, rehashing what was announced.



Clerkmanifesto Announcement Schedule:


1:45   Surprise handouts of wads of cash, several kittens, and a late period Van Gogh.

1:55   Cancer cure reveal with the head of the AMA and all living Nobel Prize Winners for Medicine.

2:04   Humorous blog post reading.

2:11   Introduction of absolute first ever in history REDACTED                 .

2:19   Time allotted for prolonged joyful weeping, cheers, applause.

2:24   Guided question and answer session with first ever REDACTED                  .

2:28   Cocktails, wine, and cheese for everyone!



I hope you enjoy whichever of these announcements you decide to attend. Don't think of it as something you're missing, rather think of it as a win-win situation where you can't make a bad choice.

Oh, you so know it's true!

I have to confess that I spend a bit too much time on the Internet. It's that feeling that there is some quality content just the tiniest click away, and everything always seems ever so close on the Internet. If only one can find it. So I click along with all the other mice hoping a pellet will drop. The trick is that there is no method to the pellets dropping. One can click ten times and a pellet will drop, and one can click a thousand times and... nothing.

And these pellets? Really tasty?

Wait, who said that? I'm 90 percent sure that can't be the point at all!

The important thing is that I have a solution to all of this. One slight flaw with my solution is that it requires being rich, but as you can see from my many letters to publishers that I have recently shared with you in this space, big bucks are just around the corner for me.

So what I propose to do is hire a full-time staff to compile for me all of the high quality content produced across the massive Internet during each 24 hour period (the Internet never sleeps!). This group of dedicated researchers will tirelessly fight through the astonishing breadth of content across Internetland and succinctly present to me all, or very nearly all of the amazing new content on the Internet from the past day!

Then I will sit down for three minutes and look at it. Brilliant!

Wait, three minutes. That's it?

Well, maybe I'll just click around a bit and see if anything new has come on.

Tar

Forget the daffodils. Who cares about the budding trees and the dance of warm weather. Green is lovely, but I have seen it before. Yes it's beautiful out, but that only heralds something greater: 

The smell of tar is in the air!

Oh tar! Beautiful beautiful tar. I know the trucks are out on the streets today to patch up all the holes in the road, all the great craters and pits gouged in the streets by a mighty Winter full of bitter cold and deep ice. But all that's just an excuse. It is merely a way to bring to us citizens the glorious odor of hot tar.

At least that's how it feels to me.

I love the smell of tar.

Why, you might wonder, do I love the smell of tar?

I don't know, but I assume that it has to do with saber tooth tigers and mastodons.

As a wee child of four I was very, very into the Pleistocene Epoch. And if you were a four-year-old fan of the Pleistocene Epoch living in the Los Angeles area, and you had anything going on at all, you made your way over to The La Brea Tar Pits.

I had just a tiny bit going on so I made my way over to The La Brea Tar Pits. There full sized statues of Mastodons struggled for their fictional lives at the edge of a pool of tar. One of them screamed and thrust his tusks in the air as the tar sucked him down. There were also statues to view of Saber-toothed Tigers, in slightly less trying circumstances, and a wide variety of genuine animal remains and reconstructed skeletons. The La Brea Tar Pits were a death trap for Pleistocene Epoch Megafauna, maybe. The reasons for the great collection of remains has become less clear. Nevertheless there were a lot of remains there in The La Brea Tar Pits. And I loved them. And it all smelled of tar. 

Tar, tar, tar! Which is the smell of glorious monsters, and magic, and of ancient history! And it is also the smell of road crews making repairs on the River Road. And then too it is the smell of my heart, burning, pining, melting with a nostalgia so deep I barely know what it is.

Dear Publisher: The deal

Dear Publisher, 


You'd better sit down.

I'm about to offer you an unprecedented opportunity.

As you will see from the following samples, I am the greatest writer that ever lived, or one of them that are in the top third, roughly, so, close enough. 

But as yet I have gone unremunerated for this... gift.

You see, I have been working at a library, and I simply couldn't be bothered about it. But lately I have been feeling a little tired of working at a library. Lately I have been thinking about cashing in.

Now I understand that simply being a magnificent writer isn't, sadly, enough, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. The market is as important, if not even far more important, in casting the financial fortunes of a book.

This is why I am offering you the unique opportunity to dictate every single aspect of this book to harness my talent.

Every.

Single.

Aspect.

Not just genre, or the details of what the book's about in order to hit the current trends and needs of the public, but the style, the tone, and the language. And it doesn't stop at merely the prose, subject, pages, and contents! I am at your beck and call. How I market is up to you. What I say is guided entirely by your publishing wisdom. You say where I go and when. You say what time and I will be there. You say change and I'll change! Indeed, you say who I should be and I will be that person!

Let's do this. Let's make a bestseller!

Anything goes!

I just have a short list of provisos to make sure we're on the same page and that everything goes smoothly.


1. I'm just a little bit particular about font.

2. I'm not very comfortable changing things around once I've gone to all the trouble of writing them in the first place.

3. I'm very attached to the words "um" and "very" and understand this can be challenging for editors.

4. I'm not at all comfortable writing about, um, well, you know.

5. I can only do marketing, interviews, correspondence, and public speaking on Tuesday mornings. An early lunch should probably be provided.

6. While my prose is highly adaptable, and I'm fully amenable to your direction, my work always seems to come out sticking it to "The Man". I don't mean this personally.

7. I don't like research, preferring to "make things up".

8. I should be the reader for my audiobook.

9. I have a couple of really cute pictures you might like for the front cover.

10. If you'd just happen to prefer printing my submitted pages exactly as is, as a book, that might be for the best. I mean, thinking of your own convenience here, mostly.


No matter what I'm really looking forward to working with you, whatever it takes!



With the greatest regard,


F. Calypso

The Man trilogy concludes

In my previous two posts I explained how The Man picked me out of a group of co-workers idling about, while I was eating some lunch, to ask "Aren't you supposed to be shelving?"

I was mad.

If you have trouble understanding my outrage you might want to consider from the following possibilities:

1. You've had it very, very easy.

2. You've been beaten down by The Man.

or...

3. You're The Man.

I'm not The Man. I haven't had it particularly easy. And I'm not beaten down. So I toddled upstairs with a cart of books, eventually, and I resolved to not shelve very much. Just to... make someone pay. Even if I wasn't really going to be able to make anyone in particular pay. 

Then I stood up there in the non fiction stacks writing angry blog posts about The Man and occasionally shelving. Then I was just shelving. Then I finished shelving my cart of books and realized that I was so mad I hadn't noticed I'd shelved 20 minutes into my dinner hour.

Oh curse The Man!

But I did get a trilogy of blog posts about it. And they will change the world. And The Man everywhere will be gnashing their teeth. And finally, after 30,000 tragic years, the little people will rise up, the sun will come out, and everyone will be left the fuck alone for, like, five minutes.

So there's that.

The meek shall inherit

When my boss came up to me on a recent afternoon and said "Aren't you supposed to be shelving?" I was mad at him as a person. But I was madder at him as The Man.

Fuck The Man.

Eventually I went upstairs with a cart of books. I was resolved to shelve 50 percent less at all times until my fury eases, for a week? A month? A year? Who will pay for this decrease in shelving? Probably no one. So as revenge goes it's probably not too bad.

Not too bad at all.

Upstairs at the library we are chock full of library patrons. My colleagues often speak harshly of them, and I understand; they are often not the easiest people to deal with. They can be erratic, rude, hostile, and demanding. As I gaze out over them on a Wednesday afternoon they are not the most prepossessing lot; in their pajamas, nowhere to go, bingeing on half-poisonous snacks, and ignoring all the fine things we have to offer here at the library in order to read celebrity gossip on the Internet.

But looking out on them, broken, old, obese, tired, lost, at least just a little bit losers, whatever their story, I cannot help notice one shining, redeemingly beautiful quality they all share:

Right now, right here, none of them are The Man.

The Man

The Man messes with us all in his different ways. Maybe The Man hasn't messed with you for ages, you think, or maybe you are The Man. I'm sorry to say that doesn't matter. The Man comes for us all, even you, like clockwork.

The Man came for me today at 3:15, just as I was finishing a bowl of potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, and tortillas. The Man said "Aren't you supposed to be shelving?"

Rattled, I gestured slightly to my food and said something about my break, but my heart said "Fuck The Man."

Eventually I headed upstairs with a cart of shelving, thinking "Fuck The Man. Fuck The Man. Fuck The Man."

The first book I had to shelve was called Jesus. 

Whoa.

"You were The Man." I thought.

"Then The Man nailed you to a cross." I added.

"Then they made you The Man again."

Fuck The Man.